


Basking

by WynterSnek



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, My First AO3 Post, Random & Short, This Is STUPID, basking, how do you even???
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 00:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WynterSnek/pseuds/WynterSnek
Summary: Where Raphael thinks the water is too shallow, and Leonardo thinks it’s too deep.





	Basking

**Author's Note:**

> certainly not the first of its kind, and certainly not long either! hopefully i can figure out how to actually write decently long stories!

Trying to sink further into the small, shallow pool of murky sewer water, the snapping turtle frowns when his shoulders barely breach the surface of the water. Scowling, he lifts his head to narrow black eyes at the two turtles struggling to stay above.

To be fair, Raphael would have preferred it to be deeper, to at least soak his neck.

“This is so stupid! Why am I so short while Raphie and Don are giants!?” The red eared slider, Leonardo, snarls out when his head finally pops out of the water. His red streaked face stays above for a few moments, before dipping back under to find a pile of dirt to stand on, Raphael assumes.

Michelangelo is silent about the matter, trying to stay afloat long enough to glance around, spot his eldest brother and paddle over, before dipping back under. The snapping turtle is amused every time when the youngest doesn’t gain any distance, his doggy paddling barley making splashes in the water.

“Donatello, come join us! The water is great, you’ll love it!” Raphael shouts to the softshell turtle, who is reclined against a sewer wall. The dark green turtle raises his head to watch his three brothers. He watches as Leonardo breaches the surface again, sputtering out dirty water and flailing, causing large waves to crash into his youngest box turtle brother and knock him back under.

They had found this spot of the sewer when their Sensei had left them to go meditate away frustration. The training day had gone terrible, Leo was in a particularly bad and whiny mood, constantly bickering with Raphael over the simplest of things. Even the youngest brother, Michelangelo, who normally was Leonardo’s right hand turtle, was not safe from his irritable mood that day.

In anger, the softshell had stormed off without permission, which caused Raphael to panic and stumble over his large feet and tail to catch up with his agile brother and keep him safe. Leonardo, who was still being nasty, decided he was going to snitch on the two, after he had seen where they had gone, which left Mikey to scramble after his three brothers.

When the two youngest caught up with the other two, all four had stumbled upon the small pool, a grate leading up to the city their Father always talked about above it. Light shining through the rusted drainage grate hit Leonardo, who before that had been arguing with Raphael. Almost instantly his mood changed, shifting from irritable and mean to drowsy and mellow.

He slowly started replying to the snapping turtles shouts with one word answered mumbles, before completely going silent, and the other three watched in awe as he yawned and stretched. “What’s happening to him Donnie?! Why is he suddenly so nice?!” Raphael panicked once again, shifting away from the moving sunlight, terrified to touch the light now soaking into a dozing red eared slider’s scales.

“Basking.” Donatello answered, watching as Michelangelo warily stepped into the patch of light, and met the same fate as his older brother. “It makes sense, now that I think about it. No wonder he was so cranky. No wonder why we’ve all been cranky, really.”

Raph blinked, biting his cheek as Donatello sat down, patting the dirty, unkempt ground. “May as well sit. We might be here for a while, considering the fact that Leo is out cold.” He grinned, watching as the red eared slider shifting onto his plastron, not stirring when Michelangelo flopped onto his navy shell.

Ever since then, Leonardo had been obsessed with basking, constantly wanting to sneak out to sit in the light again. Even now, the only reason why they were out and even in the water was because of the red eared slider’s constant complaining and whining, as he tried and failed to get to the sunlight shining into the center of the pool, right where Raph was.

Blinking back to the present, Donnie stood up and sighed, shrugging. “I guess. I do need to soak, really.” He mumbled, dropping into the water and picking up his box turtle brother by the lip of his shell, who froze at he grip. Wading past a flailing Leonardo, he dropped Mikey with a splash next to Raphael, who shifted on his plastron, spiked shell looking like tiny shark fins poking out of the water. Donnie sank into the water, reclining back onto his soft shell, floating.

Leonardo stopped causing waves, and the snapping turtle watched with suspicion as he met Mikey’s eyes, a glint of mischief and genius only Leonardo could think of as he sank back under the dark water, gone from sight.

Just when Raphael began to suspect they were up to something, he felt Michelangelo tap his side, gaining his attention and forcing the thought out of his mind long enough for Leonardo to swim up next to him, gain momentum and leap up on his shell.

“Leo! The shell are you doing?!” Raphael sputtered through sewer water, coughing as he felt his younger brother shift around to find a spot where his shell spikes didn’t poke into his scales. Finally finding a spot clear of spikes, he reclined back onto his shell, getting comfortable as Mikey climbed on against Raph’s will.

The added weight pushed him down more into the water, and he scowled as Michelangelo got comfortable on Leonardo’s plastron, before they both dozed off, happily soaking in the sun. Raph sighs, glancing at Donatello who had looked up after the whole commotion started. He simply smirked, shrugged and then lowered his head back down.

 

 

 


End file.
